Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 Z68 Motherboard Review

Storage wise, it’s all about the SATA ports and this board has a total of seven. Three of the seven (black) are based upon SATA II and run from the Intel Z68 chipset, whilst the two white ones are very much the same but are SATA III capable instead. The last two (grey) also feature SATA III capabilities but are controlled by the Marvell 88SE9172 chip.

Towards the rear of the board we find a couple more fan connectors, with the vital CPU fan header here and an ATX 12V 8-pin power connector whilst the 24-pin is located in its usual place, by the memory DIMM slots.

A unique feature of this board is the styling that we’ve touched upon, but one aspect that really stands out is the magazine that sits near the expansion slots. To make things look realistic, they’ve implemented a bullet at the top of it, whilst the base informs you that it’s not a real magazine clip, is not a weapon and cannot be assembled as a firearm, but does look cool none the less, as far as heatsinks go.

A unique worthwhile feature some might agree is the Killer E2100 chip situated by the other end of the expansion slots. This particular chip is made by Bigfoot and is said to reduce lag and latencies when in game. With an in-game ping as low as mine, I’ve never really had a problem and am unsure as to if this is really needed or whether it’s a bunch of marketing tripe that no one really needs.

The rear I/O may look to have the usual culprits but some nifty little features lay within. There is a bundle of USB ports to start with, including seven USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports and an eSATA/USB combo port. A PS/2 mouse and keyboard combo port is also present over to the left. As this board is based upon the Z68 chipset, we do find a single HDMI connector for using the GPU capabilities of Sandybridge, but don’t expect any DirectX 11 goodness from it as it simply can’t do it. The Gigabit LAN is powered by the Killer E2100 controller that we spoke about earlier whilst the audio is broken down into an optical SPDIF output and five analog audio jacks which are all powered by a Creative CA20K2 chip, featuring X-Fi and EAX technology to give one of the best onboard audio solutions on the market. The rear of this board also has an OC button in the location that we’ve seen others include a clear CMOS button. Depending on your processor, this will automatically overclock it to a pre-defined level for that quick, easy boost and can also be achieved using the included front panel bay, if you wish to use it.